Wasted Daylight
by Inkfire
Summary: Pansy Parkinson ponders the pattern of deceit that is her life. A one-shot for the Three Reasons challenge on The Dark Lord's Most Faithful forum and for Fanfiction's Got Talent! on HPFC.


**Here is my entry to Lady Eleanor Boleyn's Three Reasons challenge on The Dark Lord's Most Faithful forum. **

_**Three Reasons**_

_**For these two weeks, I'd like you to write a story either inspired by or incorporating this quote here - "That's three reasons for being the most deceitful creature on God's earth". Full Credit goes to Phillippa Gregory's Anne Boleyn, who gave me the line...**_

_**Word Count has to be between 500 and 1000, so have fun!**_

**It is also an entry for Fanfiction's Got Talent, with the Era Trio, the genre romance and the phrase "water and oil".**

**Named after the song by Stars.**

* * *

Life, she decided, was a game, and a highly deceitful one at that.

Pansy Parkinson, steeped in paradoxes as she was, remained a player at heart. A practised, powerful player, if just a means to an end – but that she could deal with. Pansy was tough enough to fight anything if she wanted – including herself, and what others wanted from her.

A player born and bred, she mused without regret. Purebloods were such, kings and queens of appearances; merely belonging to such a demanding world was reason enough to be the most deceitful creature on God's earth… So she had her mask for family, the disguise of the dutiful daughter, even-tempered and well-mannered. Of all her lies it might be the most deeply fake, yet nobody being interested in seeing beyond, it was also the safest. She played the polite little virgin, and that was good enough to keep the ladies satisfied.

(All but Mrs Malfoy. She kept an eye on her, a cool, icy eye that felt disturbingly insightful.)

Society was propriety and Hogwarts was release, giving into all the rashness of her character, for there what mattered was power and not manners. She was a Slytherin, had been, officially, since the second the Hat touched her head, and way before, as far back as she could remember – as long as she had known about Houses at all. She was a Slytherin, sneaky, devious, cunning and demanding. She belonged with the ambitious and the heartless, willing to break anything that came in her way, if there be no subtler possibility of skirting around it. She would smirk and cackle cruelly and she would taunt and tear people apart, and she would plot and prepare her next move… For if in society she only had to keep low and stainless, be one among the eligible young girls, as her name was not influential enough to grant her any more – in Hogwarts she could be queen, and so she was. Queen of her gang of giggling, vicious little girls, queen of her year; leader of all and every abuse against the Gryffindors – respected and feared.

Then she was queen, and he was king, and she was his. Deceit, deceit and delusions – _lies_ – taunted a voice in her head, a voice she could not acknowledge – for she knew it was right. They were part of the game, she and Draco, Draco and her together. Water and oil they would pretend to mix, present to the world's eye a united front, and then, in the safety of a bed where she'd pull the curtains tight like a cocoon, they'd pretend they wanted the same thing. They'd pretend it mattered and pretend it didn't, for they had to be together – who would they have otherwise? – and yet of course, it couldn't last. It was just Hogwarts, where the two of them as a couple had become part of the whole play. If they broke up, people would talk. If they broke up…

Being in love. Was it not the strongest reason of all, rooted that deep into the core of her being, whispering Draco's name into the night, clinging to her façades and her feeble strategies, so she would not lose him. Was it not painful… but Pansy was in no mind to entertain hopeless thoughts. She had Draco and Draco had her. In the darkness they would fall together into a haze where nothing but the moment mattered, cling to fragments of their masks and then fall into another lie. They would trace each other's flaws and fears, all the while pretending not to see, just because it was easier – just because they had no strength for lucidity and no sufficient selflessness to truly wish to help one another. She would breathe into his presence like it was a real thing touching her, taking over her, when he truly was so far away. He would fall into forgetfulness, let a thousand thoughts slip away from him, hardly knowing her, not knowing himself at all. She would let him because of the Mark on his arm and all those things she suspected and didn't truly want to know. What she wanted wasn't a place in Draco's world. What she wanted was Draco, and that was nothing and everything at the same time.

For now, he was there, and they were together. For all his faraway gazes and the edges and pieces of him that slipped way beyond her reach, she had him hooked to her smooth skin, just close enough to lull themselves to sleep, serenaded in the beating of each other's hearts. She was hanging from a reality to another, a shield of a girl between him and the world as though nothing had changed, as though all that mattered were still to torment Gryffindors and be on top of their year – powerful.

But if things changed, she had to change along with them and if her mask fell, another would take its place. And another and another and another – for if she was no more Slytherin, if her blood stopped shaping the path of her life – if she had to exist without him – who would she be then, Pansy Parkinson like an actress fallen from stage, faceless and numb?

(It was easier to deceive, it was easier to pretend. It would always be easier.)


End file.
